DBMS > Cassandra vs. Google BigQuery vs. HBase vs. Neo4j vs. STSdb

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Google BigQuery vs. HBase vs. Neo4j vs. STSdb

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Large scale data warehouse service with append-only tables

Wide-column store based on Apache Hadoop and on concepts of BigTable

Scalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offerings

Key-Value Store with special method for indexing

optimized for high performance using a special indexing method

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	60.38
Rank	#19	Overall
	#13	Relational DBMS

Score	30.50
Rank	#26	Overall
	#2	Wide column stores

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.04
Rank	#360	Overall
	#52	Key-value stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

cloud.google.com/bigquery

hbase.apache.org

neo4j.com

github.com/STSSoft/STSdb4

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs

hbase.apache.org/book.html

neo4j.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Powerset

Neo4j, Inc.

STS Soft SC

Initial release

2008

2010

2008

2007

2011

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

2.3.4, January 2021

5.20, May 2024

4.0.8, September 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

GPLv2, commercial license available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Neo4j Aura: Neo4j’s fully managed cloud service: The zero-admin, always-on graph database for cloud developers.

Implementation language

Java

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
Unix
Windows

using Cygwin

Linux

Can also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free, schema definition possible

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

options to bring your own types, AVRO

yes

primitive types and user defined types (classes)

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Java API
RESTful HTTP API
Thrift

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

.NET Client API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Groovy
Java
PHP
Python
Scala

.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C#
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

in JavaScript

yes

Coprocessors in Java

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency

Causal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

Since BigQuery is designed for querying data

Single row ACID (across millions of columns)

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access privileges (owner, writer, reader) on dataset, table or view level

Google Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM)

Access Control Lists (ACL) for RBAC, integration with Apache Ranger for RBAC & ABAC

Users, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
» more

GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more

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